


What if I Die Tomorrow?

by autumnwolf99



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, M/M, after war, might be continued
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumnwolf99/pseuds/autumnwolf99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What if I die tomorrow?” It was a common conversation-starter of their’s, having started when the war was still going on. <br/>“What if I die tomorrow?” Harry would ask, and Draco would roll his eyes, kiss him, and assure him that he would never let that happen. </p>
<p>A drarry one-shot with a more morbid feeling to it, currently stands alone but might be made into the starting point for a chapter fic I'm working on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What if I Die Tomorrow?

“What if I die tomorrow?”

It was a common conversation-starter of their’s, having started when the war was still going on.

“What if I die tomorrow?” Harry would ask, and Draco would roll his eyes, kiss him, and assure him that he would never let that happen.

It started off as a joke, a playful question used to make Draco properly kiss him goodbye when they first began dating. The other always tried sneaking away after their time together, and that just didn’t cut it for Harry - he wanted to kiss his boyfriend in front of his housemates and friends and everyone else, too. It stayed though, long after Draco overcame his problem with public displays of affection.

Sometimes it was used to get them over petty arguments, sometimes Harry said it just for Draco’s adorable reaction, sometimes it got Draco to agree to what Harry wanted for dinner.

When the war picked up more, it became more serious. Instead of ending fights, it would start them, Draco’s reaction slowly became more worried and somber, and they no longer had enough options to fight over what was for dinner.

Harry began saying it less, simply because it was no longer a joke - it was a real fear, for both of them. What if Voldemort got to him? What if one of the Death Eaters did? What if Draco’s side-switching was discovered? What if he was outed as a spy, if Voldemort realized who was _really_ being spied on?

The last fear went away when they properly began hunting for horcruxes - Draco was outed as a spy the instant he went with them - but it only morphed into a new fear. Now the Death Eaters were out for the young Malfoy’s blood, and Voldemort wanted vengeance for what he saw as a betrayal; he never knew that Draco was never truly on his side from the start.

“What if I die tomorrow?”

It wasn’t said was before the Battle of Hogwarts, the final battle, where one of them actually died. Harry didn’t want to somehow call on some ancient magic and jinx them. Draco kissed Harry without hesitation. It hadn’t needed to be said, because they were both thinking it already.

When Hagrid carried Harry’s body out of the forest, Harry seemingly dead, something inside of Draco broke. Harry still has nightmares about the sound of anguish his boyfriend made, Draco still can’t cast a proper Patronus. Luckily, Harry wasn’t really dead, and after the battle, Draco had a breakdown, they talked all night, and then it was never brought up again.

The sentence, however, came back.

They both made it into the Auror’s department, and even though there were rules against Aurors working with a romantic partner, no one could separate them: they were too used to each other’s fighting style, too accustomed to the way one another thought. They made an amazing team and besides - everyone secretly saw them as invincible anyway. What could possibly happen to the Boy Who Lived Twice and his Ex-Death Eater boyfriend? They could make it through anything.

“What if I die tomorrow?”

Harry said it the night before most of the jobs they went on as Aurors. A lot of the Auror work was mundane and actually not all that dangerous (not compared to what they’d seen, what they’d lived through already), but it was almost a tradition by now.

“What if I die tomorrow?” he’d ask, and Draco would roll his eyes and assure him it simply couldn’t happen.

“What if I die tomorrow?” and he’d get a kiss or a few hours of snuggling, occasionally a sigh and a ‘What do you want this time?’

Harry didn’t say it before the last job he went on as an Auror, the only time he neglected to say it besides the night before the Battle of Hogwarts.

Sometimes he wonders, if he said it, would things have gone differently?

Might _he_ have been the one to die instead?

“What if I die tomorrow?”

Draco always assured him that it wouldn’t happen. First it was, “Don’t be so melodramatic, Potter. You won’t die.” Then it became, “Potter, you won’t die. Too many people care about to you let that happen,” and slowly it turned into, “As long as I live Potter, you won’t be _able_ to die.” The most recent had been, “Harry, you aren’t going to die. I promise I won’t let that happen.”

Slytherins were never known for keeping promises, and Draco was a Slytherin through-and-through, but he kept that promise: he didn’t let Harry die.

One Auror mission gone wrong.  
One particularly nasty curse sent his way.  
One promise he never expected to be kept, not in this way.  
One second, far too little time to cast a counter or a shield.  
One action he wished had never been taken.

 

“Stupefy!” Harry shouted, and the unidentified attacker fell to the ground. He could have used a much stronger spell, he could have used something more painful, he could have used _Avada Kedavra_ with the state he was in, but when in a rush and panicking more than he had in years, he supposed he reverted back to what he knew best.

All of his Auror training went out the window. Harry ignored the attacker in favor of running over to Draco and collapsing to the ground next to him. There was blood, there was a _lot_ of blood, and Harry wasn’t even sure where all of it was coming from. His arm? His shoulder? His chest, his stomach, his thigh?

He began working instantly. Auror training didn’t cover much past basic healing spells, but Harry had incentive to learn more than that, so he did. He considered being a Healer for a short time actually, and was now regretting that he chose Auror instead: the spells weren’t doing anything. Was he doing something wrong? Was his magic somehow not strong enough?

“H-Harry…?” Draco mumbled, forcing himself to open his eyes. “Harry stop, y-you can’t…”

“Don’t tell me I can’t, Draco!” Harry replied furiously, continuing to cast spell after spell. He was even starting to consider other options - apparate them to St. Mungo’s? (Too dangerous with Draco so injured and himself so worked up) Try a stasis spell until he could get proper help? (His stasis spells never fully worked - that had been one of Draco’s stronger points)

“Your spells,” Draco tried explaining, “t-they won’t… do anything… ‘s the nature of this curse.”

Harry felt like the words physically wounded him, but he kept trying spell after spell even knowing it was pointless. Draco always knew more about Dark Magic and curses than him, after all - he didn’t even recognize what his boyfriend was hit with.

“Harry, stop wasting-” Draco began, cutting off partially through the sentence, his words dissolving into coughing, “S-stop wasting energy, could be… more people. I’m already dead. Curse eats away at you... c-causes enough damage... to kill in seconds, but… keeps you alive to f-feel the pain.”

Three more spells and Harry lowered his wand, having no idea what to do since so far, not a single thing had any effect. Draco was right - according to the diagnosis charms, he was already dead.

Draco forced a smile. “Y-you’re on the ground… robes’ll get dirt on them… you’ll have to… get them cleaned again...” He ended the statement with a gasp, his face contorting in pain for a few seconds - the curse was progressing quickly.

“You will too,” Harry replied, running his hand through Draco’s hair gently as tears welled up in his eyes, “your robes will need to be cleaned too.” A few seconds later he cried out in frustration, “Why, Draco? Why’d you jump in front of me?”

“I love you,” Draco mumbled, his voice growing progressively weaker, “and… I-I promised…”

A few seconds later, Draco’s eyes closed and Harry clutched the body to his chest desperately, his tears running freely.

_“What if I die tomorrow?”_  
They hadn’t said it that day. It hadn’t even been said the previous night, and Draco was never, _never_ the one to say it… So why...?  
_“Harry, I promise I won’t let that happen.”_

 

Hours later, a different team of Aurors found Harry in the same position, on the ground holding on to the lifeless body of his boyfriend. The only difference was the surroundings: five Death Eaters’ corpses decorated the ground around them, none of which had been there when Draco was hit with the original curse.

Two were obviously taken down with department-approved hexes.  
Two were disarmed, then taken out with painful-looking cutting curses.  
One had no cuts, no injuries, and no signs of what killed him at all.

  
If Harry died tomorrow, there would be no Draco around to stop it from happening.

**Author's Note:**

> This will always be kept up as a one-shot, but as I mentioned in the summary, I might make it into the starting point for a Dark!Harry fic, depending on how much attention this gets, how much free time I find myself with, and how the actual writing process goes. 
> 
> If I do a chapter fic, this will still work as a stand-alone thing, and the chapter fic will also still make sense without reading this one. (I will post an update to this if I do decide to do post a chapter fic though)


End file.
